(i) Technical Field
The present invention relates to a charging member, a process cartridge, and an image forming apparatus.
(ii) Related Art
In electrophotographic image forming apparatuses, the surface of an image carrier (e.g., a photoreceptor) is charged with a charging device or the like and subsequently irradiated with a laser beam or the like modulated in accordance with an image signal in order to form an electrostatic latent image, which is developed with a charged toner to form a toner image. The toner image is transferred to a recording medium directly or via an intermediate transfer body to form a desired image.
Known examples of a charging device included in such image forming apparatuses include contactless charging devices such as corotron and scorotron, which perform charging by using corona discharge generated by applying a high voltage to a common metal wire. On the other hand, instead of these contactless charging devices, contact charging devices including a charging roller have been widely used because, for example, the contact charging devices generally require a lower voltage and generate a smaller amount of ozone than the contactless charging devices.